Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM, TSE: RIM) has announced that Microsoft's Bing search engine, the perennial loser in the struggle for search engine market share, will be the default engine on it's BlackBerry devices. This announcement was made by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer at BlackBerry World, the industry conference hosted by RIM in Orlando, Florida.Rival Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) dominates the search market and this move by Microsoft is hoping to take away some of Google's dominant market share. Google's Android phones, however, are beginning to take hold of the smartphone market as well, which has been bad for RIM and many other handset makers. Many industry watchers say that the Android phones are more user-friendly and open to third-party apps than are the phones of their rivals.
According to recent Nielson surveys, Android now has a 29% market share of smartphones in the US. Blackberry is now at 27%, while Apple's sits at 27% as well. Of course, it is important to note that Apple and Blackberry are also handset makers, while Google is not, they simply generate the operating system or OS.
No comments:
Post a Comment